BÄCKSTRAND Accountability and legitimacy of networked governance. Public private partnerships for sustainable development

Prévia do material em texto

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Accountability and Legitimacy of Networked Governance. 
Public-Private Partnerships for Sustainable Development 
 
 
Karin Bäckstrand 
Department of Political Science 
Lund University, Sweden 
karin.backstrand@svet.lu.se 
 
Draft- please do not quote without author’s permission 
 
Paper presented at the 2005 Berlin Conference “International Organizations and Global 
Environmental Governance”, 2-3 December 2005 
 
Panel 2D: Legitimacy and Participation 
 
Abstract 
The role of transnational partnerships in contemporary global environmental 
discourse raises larger questions of the legitimacy, effectiveness and accountability 
of networked governance structures. This paper advances a conceptual framework 
for evaluating the legitimacy of partnership networks. Furthermore, it examines, in 
particular, the multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development 
announced at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 
2002. Partnership networks have been branded as a new form of global 
governance with the potential to bridge multilateral norms and local action by 
drawing on a diverse number of actors in civil society, government and business. 
Does the rise of global partnerships imply a re-location and diffusion of authority 
from government to public-private “implementation networks”? Recent 
evaluations of the Johannesburg partnerships suggest that they can gain from a 
clearer linkage to existing institutions and multilateral agreements, measurable 
targets and timetables, more effective leadership, improved accountability 
mechanisms, more systematic review, reporting and monitoring mechanisms. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Introduction 
The multi-stakeholder partnership initiative announced at the 2002 World Summit on 
Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg can be conceived of as “post-
sovereign”, “networked” and “hybrid” governance”, concepts that increasingly are 
receiving attention in international relations. Partnership networks have been branded as a 
new form of global governance with the potential to bridge multilateral norms and local 
action by drawing on a diverse number of actors in civil society, government and 
business. Does the rise of global partnerships imply a re-location and diffusion of 
authority from government to public-private “implementation networks”? In the field of 
sustainable development the emergence of governance structures based on private 
authority, private regimes and a mix of public and private actors is particularly 
pronounced. Partnerships have been framed as innovative forms of governance that can 
effectively address the three “deficits” of global environmental politics: the governance 
deficit, implementation deficit and participation deficit.1 Proponents argue that voluntary 
multi-sectoral networks, spanning the public-private domain, captures the essence of 
“governance from below”, counter the participation gap and effectively address the 
implementation gap in global environmental politics. However, the positive assessment 
of the Johannesburg partnerships has not gone unchallenged. Critics point to problems of 
representation and accountability of partnerships as they consolidate the privatization of 
governance and reinforce dominant neoliberal modes of globalization. Commentators 
have cautioned against seeing multi-stakeholder partnerships as a panacea for global 
governance.2 Whatever perspective adopted, the partnerships have emerged partly as a 
response to the limits of multilateralism, where intergovernmental diplomacy alone 
cannot grapple with the pressing problems and complex dimensions of sustainable 
development. The rise of partnerships prompts the question whether there is 
transformation and shift of global governance from sovereign to private authority.3 This 
article argues that we need to rethink notions of accountability and legitimacy and make 
them congruent with the contemporary global governance structures consisting of 
overlapping and competing authorities – sovereign, private as well as “hybrid”. 
 
The role of transnational partnerships in contemporary global environmental discourse 
raises larger questions of the legitimacy, effectiveness and accountability of networked 
 
1 Peter Haas, “Addressing the Global Governance Deficit,” Global Environmental Politics 4, no. 
4 (2004): 1-15. 
2 Felix Dodds et al., “Post Johannesburg. The Future of the UN Commission on Sustainable 
Development”, Paper No. 9 (London: Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future, 2002), p. 2; 
Maria Ivanova, “Partnership, International Organizations, and Global Environmental 
Governance” in Benner, Thorsten, Charlotte Streck and Jan Martin Witte, eds., Progress or 
Peril? Networks and Partnerships in Global Environmental Governance. The Post-Johannesburg 
Agenda (Berlin and Washington D.C.: Global Public Policy Institute, 2003) 
3 Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds., The Emergence of Private Authority in 
Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 
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governance structures. This article advances a conceptual framework for evaluating the 
legitimacy of partnership networks. Furthermore, it examines, in particular, the multi-
stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development. Legitimacy can be conceived of as 
the quality of the particular social and political order; the belief held by actors that the 
particular rule, institution or order ought to be obeyed. A two-fold interpretation of 
legitimacy is adopted, i.e. input and output legitimacy.4 Input legitimacy concerns 
whether the process conform to procedural demands, such as representation of relevant 
stakeholders, transparency and accountability. Output legitimacy revolves around 
effectiveness or “problem solving capacity” of the governance system. In the context of 
partnerships for sustainable development, legitimacy is captured in the following two 
questions: Do private-public partnerships “perform” and “deliver” the promised results-
based environmental governance? Are partnerships open to public scrutiny and 
representative and inclusive of different stakeholders interests? 
 
The first section spells out the key assumptions and arguments. The second section 
conceptualizes partnerships as multi-sectoral networks and presents a framework for 
evaluating legitimacy, accountability and effectiveness of networked governance. In the 
third section, the context and rationale for the contested multi-stakeholder partnership 
initiative at the Johannesburg summit is outlined. The fourth section takes stock of the 
input legitimacy of the partnerships along two dimensions: representation and 
accountability. In the fifth section output legitimacy is examined in terms of institutional 
effectiveness: are partnerships linked to global norms, what are their degree of 
institutionalization and level of reporting and monitoring mechanisms. The concluding 
section highlights some theoretical implications of the WSSD partnerships, such as the 
transformation of authority relations and the scope for transnational democratic 
legitimacy. 
 
Key Propositions and Arguments 
The sustainable development partnerships are squarely placed at the nexus between 
multilateral and private governance. They thereby capture “hybrid” governance, which 
are in focus rather than “pure” forms of private governance such as civil society forum, 
rules of conduct, self-regulation and voluntary standards.5 The effectiveness, and more 
recently, the legitimacy of intergovernmental treaty making, international regimes and 
organizations are well-established research fields in international relations. The influence, 
legitimacy and accountability of civil society in global governance have also received 
scholarly attention.6 However, the legitimacyof networked governance is a nascent 
research agenda, partly because networks escape traditional models of hierarchical 
accountability. The understanding of legitimacy and accountability advanced in this 
article can be applied to other public-private partnerships, such as the Clean Development 
 
4 Fritz Scharpf, “European Governance”, Jean Monnet Working Paper 07/71 (Florence: European 
University Institute, 2001) 
5 Johannes Stripple, Climate Change After the International. Rethinking Security, Territory and 
Authority, PhD thesis (Lund, Department of Political Science, Lund University, 2005) 
6 Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activist Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in 
International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1998); Jan Aart Scholte, “Civil 
Society and Democracy in Global Governance”, Global Governance, 8, no. 3 (2002): 281-304. 
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Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) 
and the UN Global Compact.7 However, the Johannesburg partnerships are particularly 
interesting to study since they tap into intergovernmental processes of sustainable 
development. Other multi-sectoral networks and stakeholder processes, such as the World 
Commission of Dams and OECD panels on biotechnology, have a more separate 
existence or are institutions in their own right. 
 
Secondly issues of power, representation and voice are critical in the analysis of these 
new modes of networked governance. Partnerships can be conceived of as 
implementation networks with the potential to bridge global multilateral norms and local 
action in areas such as sustainable development and climate change.8 In line with earlier 
empirical assessments of the WSSD partnership initiative9, I argue that legitimacy issues, 
such as public scrutiny, transparency, clear guidelines for monitoring effectiveness, are 
critical to the future success of the transnational partnership movement. There are 
grounds for cautioned optimism as the multi-stakeholder partnerships, if properly 
designed with mechanisms to enhance accountability and monitoring performance, can 
potentially shape a more pluralistic governance order. 
 
Thirdly, it is problematic to use criteria stemming from ideal-type national democracy to 
evaluate the legitimacy and accountability of global governance structures lacking a 
supranational authority. Ideal-type models of democratic accountability and legitimacy 
are not even fully realized in liberal democracies. The cosmopolitan quest10 to transfer 
models of domestic democracy to the global level is utopian due to the lack of coherent 
electorate, a global parliament and a clear principal in the international sphere. Instead of 
exporting domestic models of democratic legitimacy and accountability to the global 
level the concept of accountability should be redefined to fit the elusive character of 
networked and hybrid governance structures. Partnership networks prompt us to move 
beyond the conceptual trap of state-centric notions democracy. Purposely, I use the 
notion of legitimacy rather than democracy as an entry point to analyze multi-sectoral 
networks. Broadly, partnerships and multi-stakeholder processes can be conceived as 
 
7 For an analysis of CDM partnerships, see Karin Bäckstrand and Eva Lövbrand (in press) 
“Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change. Contested Discourses of Ecological Modernization, 
Green Governmentality and Civic Environmentalism”, Global Environmental Politics 6, no.1 
(2006); Charlotte Streck, “New Partnerships in Global Environmental Policy: The Clean 
Development Mechanism” Journal of Environment and Development, 13, no. 3 (2004): 295-322. 
8 Charlotte Streck, “New Partnerships in Global Environmental Policy: The Clean Development 
Mechanism”, p. 298. 
9 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of the 
Johannesburg Type II Partnerships” in Olav Schram Stocke and Øystein B. Thomessen, eds., 
Yearbook of International Cooperation on Environment and Development 2003/04 (London: 
Earthscan, 2003); Maria Ivanova, “Partnership, International Organizations, and Global 
Environmental Governance” 
10 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order. From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan 
Governance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); David Held, “Democratic 
Accountability and Political Effectiveness from a Cosmopolitan Perspective,” Government and 
Opposition 39, no. 2 (2004): 364-91. 
 
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viable forms of deliberative democracy suitable for the global level, which is defined by a 
lack of supranational authority. 
 
Legitimacy of Networked Governance 
 
In this section a framework for thinking about output and input legitimacy in the context 
of networked governance is advanced. Scholarly work that develops alternative notions 
of accountability and legitimacy is interesting in this context.11 What does accountability 
mean in the context of global governance structures based on competing and overlapping 
authorities – state authority, private authority, moral authority? First partnerships are 
conceptualized as multi-sectoral networks. Then a notion of legitimacy suitable for global 
governance is outlined. Finally, input and output legitimacy of networked governance are 
operationalized. Rather than devoting efforts to how build new institutions, such as world 
federation or global parliament, we could ask how the existing institutional frameworks, 
networks and governance orders – exemplified with transnational partnerships – can be 
made more legitimate, transparent and accountable. 
 
Partnerships as Multi-sectoral Networks 
Multi-sectoral networks represent a new species of governance emerging alongside 
traditional multilateral agreements. These can be defined as “voluntary cooperative 
arrangements between actors from the public, business and civil society that display 
minimal degree of institutionalization, have common non-hierarchical decision-making 
structures and address public policy issues”.12 The WSSD partnerships can be conceived 
of as institutionalized forms of global public policy networks or multisectoral networks, 
bringing together public and private actors. These networks capture the essence of post-
sovereign governance entailing collaboration between market actors, governments, 
international organizations and NGOs on a range of issues from sustainable development, 
climate change, water, AIDS, Malaria prevention and biodiversity protection.13 Public-
policy networks are voluntary, non-legislative and often geared towards implementation 
and joint-problem-solving. They represent soft and non-hierarchical steering, and 
consequently, the logic of arguing and persuasion as rule making.14 Proponents of multi-
sectoral networks argue that these promise more result-based governance due to their 
decentralized flexible structure and diverse expertise. Networks potentially close the 
 
11See for example Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang H. Reinicke and Jan Martin Witte, “Multisectoral 
Networks in Global Governance: Towards a Pluralistic System of Accountability”, Government 
and Opposition 29, no. 2 (2004): 191-208; Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, “Democracy, 
Accountability and Global Governance”, manuscript (Cambridge MA: Kennedy School of 
Government, 2001); Thomas Risse, “Global Governance and Communicative Action”, 
Government and Opposition, 39, no. 2 (2004a): 288-1 and “Transnational Governance and 
Legitimacy”, Paper presented at the Fifth Pan-European Conference on International Relations, 
9-11 of September 2004 (Hague, Netherlands, 2004b). 
12 Julia Steets, “Developing a Framework Concepts and Research Priorities for Partnership 
Accountability”, Global Public Policy Institute (GPPI) ResearchPaper Series No. 1 (2004), 
accessible at http://www.globalpublicpolicy.net, p. 25. 
13 Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang H. Reinicke and Jan Martin Witte, “Multisectoral Networks in 
Global Governance: Towards a Pluralistic System of Accountability”, p. 191-192. 
14 Thomas Risse, “Global Governance and Communicative Action”. 
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implementation gap by connecting local practice and global rules in a flexible and 
decentralized manner. Partnership networks can also decrease the governance gap by 
complementing multilateral treaty making with voluntary problem solving and self-
regulation. Finally, partnership networks reduce the “participation gap” in global 
governance by including a diverse set of stakeholders and intergovernmental actors. 
However, critics argue that multi-sectoral networks fail to live up to traditional 
accountability structures and monitoring mechanisms. In this view, how can networks 
between international organizations, transnational companies and non-governmental 
actors be accountable if the actors themselves are unaccountable? Instead, partnership 
networks lead to the privatization of global governance, give rise to corporate power, 
weaken and fragment the multilateral order and reinforce a neoliberal world order. 
 
Normatively, global governance can be conceived as the process of creating a legitimate 
political order in the absence of supranational authority or world government. Legitimacy 
refers to the overall quality of the social order – the institutions, norms and rules rather 
than the actors.15 The legitimacy stems both from a procedural logic (that rules are 
predictable and determined by legitimate actors) and a consequential logic (that rules and 
institutions lead to collective problem-solving). Input legitimacy refers to first dimension 
- the participatory quality of the decision-making process (transparency, representation 
and accountability). The second dimension - output legitimacy - relates to the problem-
solving capacities of the institution or rule, i.e. if governance is effective.16 While this 
twofold conception of legitimacy has been used to for analyzing supranational 
governance in the EU, it can arguably be applied to global governance structures without 
supranational rule and authority. In this perspective, high output legitimacy in terms of 
effective collective problem solving can compensate for low input legitimacy. Vice versa, 
lack of effective regulatory capacity prompts the need for greater input legitimacy in 
terms of transparent and accountable decision-making processes. 
 
Input legitimacy 
Input legitimacy in multi-sectoral networks relates procedural demands such as balanced 
representation of different stakeholder groups, forum for collaboration and deliberation 
between government, market and civil society actors, transparency, access, information 
sharing and accountability and reporting mechanisms. I will focus on two aspects of input 
legitimacy 1) balanced representation of various stakeholders in networks 2) 
accountability and transparency mechanisms for monitoring effectiveness of partnership 
networks. 
 
Representativeness concerns to what extent partnerships includes various stakeholders 
interests. To assess the representativeness of stakeholder participation in global multi-
sectoral networks the following question could be asked: To what extent is an 
appropriately wide range of stakeholder groups participating formally in the network, as 
lead or ordinary partners? Throughout the 1990s, stakeholder participation has been the 
buzzword of multilateralism, and particular pronounced in global environmental 
diplomacy. Since the 1992 United Conference on Environment and Development 
 
15 Thomas Risse “Transnational Governance and Legitimacy”, p. 7. 
16 Fritz Scharpf, “European Governance”. 
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UNCED), “multistakeholdership” has been launched to make multilateralism more 
inclusive and responsive to marginalized groups (exemplified by women and indigenous 
people), and as a remedy to the “participation gap” and disenfranchisement in global 
environmental governance.17 Multilateral financial institutions, which have come under 
fierce criticism for suffering from a democratic deficit, have responded by establishing 
consultative arrangements with civil society.18 The assumption underpinning the 
“governance from below” paradigm is pretty straightforward: more participation by 
affected groups will generate more effective collective problem solving. In the terms 
adopted in this paper: input legitimacy will increase output legitimacy through 
deliberative mechanisms for enhancing stakeholder consultation. Consequently, in the 
context of global problem solving the call for representation and participation has 
primarily an instrumental value. This has been most pronounced in gender/sustainable 
development agenda, where paradoxically, women are both seen as victims of 
environmental destruction as well as the key to solving the environmental crisis. 
 
Accountability refers to the relationships between actors (principal-agent, citizen-
decision-maker etc.). For example, in democratic systems, through mechanisms of 
representation, rulers are accountable to citizens. Citizens can participate in elections and 
vote decision-makers out of office if they do not live up to expectations. Decision-makers 
have to justify and explain their action vis-a-vi citizens. However, hierarchical and 
electoral accountability to enhance legitimacy are difficult in a global system of rule 
without an electorate, mechanisms of representation and a parliament. In networks 
legitimacy has to be enhanced through indirect accountability mechanisms. Networks 
“are diffuse, complex weakly institutionalised collaborative systems that are neither 
directly accountable to an electoral base nor they exhibit clear principal agent 
relationship”.19 
 
In this context it is helpful to distinguish between internal and external accountability. 
20Internal accountability means that democratically elected governments are accountable 
to their citizens, companies to their shareholders, non-governmental organizations to their 
members and international organizations to their member states. Formal control 
mechanisms such as electoral and hierarchical accountability are employed. However, 
these mechanisms of formal accountability are not suitable for multi-stakeholding and 
partnerships where there is a lack of clear principal, electorate and coherent constituency. 
 
17 Lorraine Elliot, The Global Politics of the Environment (London: Palgrave, 2004); Dana Fisher 
and Jessica F. Green, “Understanding Disenfranchisement: Civil Society and Developing 
Countries” Influence and Participation in Global Governance for Sustainable Development,” 
Global Environmental Politics, 4, no. 3 (2004): 65-84. 
18 Michael Mason, “Representing Transnational Interests: New Opportunities for Non-
Governmental Access to the World Trade Organization”, Environmental Politics, 13, no. 3 
(2004): 566-89. 
19 Thorsten Benner, Charlotte Streck and Jan Martin Witte, eds., Progress or Peril? Networks and 
Partnerships in Global Environmental Governance. The Post-Johannesburg Agenda (Berlin and 
Washington D.C: Global Public Policy Institute, 2003), p. 3. 
20 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, “Democracy, Accountability and Global Governance”; 
Thomas Risse, “Transnational Governance and Legitimacy”. 
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External accountability means that decision-makers have to justify their action vis-à-vis 
stakeholders that are affected by their decisions. The World Bank’s consultation with 
civil society and the stakeholder dialogues in World Commission on Dams are two 
examples of efforts to institutionalize external accountability.21 
 
A top-down accountability mechanismis less suitable for partnerships since this runs 
counter to the decentralized and flexible nature of the partnership endeavor. Research on 
accountability of partnership networks suggests that horizontal accountability 
mechanisms are more applicable.22 Partnerships in this vein would be accountable to a 
broad range of affected stakeholders, such as NGOs, the media, governments, donors and 
multilateral organizations. Accordingly, partnerships need pluralistic accountability 
structures, such as 1) professional peer accountability; 2) reputational accountability; 3) 
market accountability: 4) financial/fiscal accountability.23 
 
Output Legitimacy 
In the context of multi-sectoral networks, output legitimacy can be formulated as 
effectiveness of partnership agreements. Effectiveness relates to the problem solving 
capacity: does the partnership attain its own goals and targets? Effectiveness in the field 
of sustainable development has two dimensions. First, to which extent does the 
agreement lead to desired environmental and developmental outcomes (quantitative goals 
of poverty eradication, access to freshwater biodiversity protection etc)? The second 
dimension is to what degree the partnership network has an adequate and effective 
institutional design and framework to reach desired outcomes. The latter - the 
“institutional effectiveness” - leadership, clear goal formulation, policy coherence - is the 
main focus in this article. The “outcome effectiveness” is hard to judge since the 
implementation of the sustainable development goals is long-term process. In addition, 
which will be outlined in the sections below, many of the goals are not formulated as 
measurable targets and timetables, which makes the implementation record difficult to 
evaluate. 
 
The question of effectiveness of international environmental agreements is a research 
agenda in itself that is beyond the scope of this paper to review.24 How can theoretical 
 
21 Klaus Dingworth , “The Democratic Legitimacy of Public-Private Rule Making. What Can We 
Learn from the World Commission on Dams?”, Global Governance 11, no. 1 (2005):65-83. 
22 Julia Steets, “Developing a Framework Concepts and Research Priorities for Partnership 
Accountability”. 
23Jan Martin Witte, Charlotte Streck and Thorsten Benner, “The Road from Johannesburg: What 
Future for Partnerships in Global Environmental Governance?” in Thorsten Benner, Charlotte 
Streck and Jan Martin Witte, eds., Progress or Peril? Networks and Partnerships in Global 
Environmental Governance. The Post-Johannesburg Agenda (Berlin & Washington D.C: Global 
Public Policy Institute, 2003), p. 75. 
24 On effectiveness and implementation of international environmental agreements see David 
Victor, Kal Raustilia and Eugene B. Skolnikoff, eds., The Implementation and Effectiveness of 
International Environmental Treaties. Theory and Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); 
Edith Weiss Brown and Harold K. Jakobson, Engaging Countries. Strengthening Compliance 
with International Environmental Accords (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2000) and Oran Young, 
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and practical insights on the effectiveness of multilateral environmental treaties be 
extended to non-negotiated public-private partnership? Implementation, compliance and 
effectiveness can be differentiated.25 Implementation refers to measures by parties to 
incorporate international agreements into domestic law. Applying this state-centric notion 
of implementation to voluntary multi-stakeholder networks without legislative powers, 
this would be the effort of the partnership network to implement its own targets, 
timetables and goals. Compliance moves beyond implementation and relates to whether 
parties adhere to the intergovernmental norms and rules as well as substantive and 
procedural obligations. In essence, do the parties comply with the spirit of the agreement? 
Effectiveness concerns the “environmental outcome” of the agreement, i.e. whether the 
objectives are attained and if the networked agreement is effective in addressing the 
problem it intended to solve. Does the agreement have problem-solving capacity and 
contribute to improvements in the state of the environment? The impact of the 
partnership agreement on the environment is a methodologically complex issue that many 
political scientists escape. Parties can comply with obligations in a multilateral 
agreement, for example in the Montreal Protocol on ozone layer. However, this does not 
necessarily make the treaty effective in terms of reducing the problem of depletion of 
stratospheric ozone layer. Compliance is thus a necessary but not sufficient precondition 
for effectiveness of a treaty. 
 
Partnerships for Sustainable Development: The WSSD Context and Beyond 
More than 220 partnerships for sustainable development (amounting to $235 million) 
were announced in conjunction with the Johannesburg summit in 2002. As of today 311 
partnerships in the fields of water, energy, health, biodiversity are registered in the 
Partnership Database, which has an own website since February 2004.26 This section 
briefly explains the nature, political context and rationale of the partnership initiative 
before and after the summit. 
 
The much publicized partnership initiative can be conceived as the flagship of the 
Johannesburg summit, although it was both highly controversial and remains deeply 
contested. What is the nature of these multistakeholder partnerships, which were 
collectively branded as a “Type II agreements”? In the preparatory process for the 
summit the distinction between Type I and Type II agreements or outcomes emerged. 
Type I outcomes refer to negotiated agreements between states, such as declarations, 
action plans and treaties. The Johannesburg Declaration and Johannesburg Plan of 
Implementation (JPOI) represent intergovernmental negotiated agreements on sustainable 
 
ed., The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes. Causal Connection and 
Behavioral Mechanisms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1999). 
25 Edith Weiss Brown and Harold K. Jakobson, Engaging Countries. Strengthening Compliance 
with International Environmental Accords. 
26 The partnership initiative can be found at 
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/partnerships/partnerships.htm and the partnership database at 
http://webapps01.un.org/dsd/partnerships/public/browse.do, accessed November 29, 2005. 
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development27. In contrast, Type II agreements such as the partnerships are multi-
stakeholder initiatives linked to the implementation of commitments in Agenda 21 and 
the JPOI. The WSSD partnerships are voluntary, self-enforced and non-negotiated 
agreements between different constellations of governments, international organizations, 
NGOs and industry partners. While Type I agreements refers to formally negotiated 
outcomes between member states, Type II agreement do not require consensus and were 
not negotiated within the summit process but rather represented “coalitions of willing” 
among non-state and state actors. The cornerstone is that the responsibility for 
implementing the complex and cross-sectoral issues in the sustainable development 
agenda cannot be limited to governments but has to be diffused into wider sectors of 
society. 
 
This brings us to the overall political context for partnership. The partnership rhetoric is 
arguably situated in a broader post-cold war context.28 Since the 1990s, sustainable 
development is squarely placed in a discourse of “liberal environmentalism”.29 The 1992 
Rio accords consolidated dominant norms of liberal environmentalism, in which 
environmental protection and sustainable development are viewed as compatiblewith 
capitalist markets and liberal trading order. Furthermore, in the post-UNCED agenda 
liberal democracy and “good governance” are regarded as the most viable political 
institutional frameworks for tackling sustainable development challenges. The regulatory 
approach for partnerships encapsulates norms of liberal environmentalism or ecological 
modernization. In this policy paradigm, flexible, decentralized, voluntary market-oriented 
approaches to environmental problem solving have gained terrain as an important 
complement to top-down state-centric decision-making. However, the partnership 
rhetoric is not limited to neoliberal regulatory models. The normative implication is a 
broadened societal responsibility for the sustainable development agenda, captured by 
notions of corporate social responsibility.30 In this perspective, the responsibility of 
implementing multilateral commitments to sustainable development does not rest 
exclusively among governments, but should also include business and civil society in a 
larger collaborative endeavor. 
 
What was then the rationale for launching Type II partnerships at the Johannesburg 
summit? A critical analysis of the WSSD partnerships argues that there was an official 
 
27 United Nations, “United Nations Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable 
Development”, in Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Johannesburg, 
South Africa, 26 August - 4 September A/CONF.199/20 (New York: 2002). 
28 Weiss Brown, Edith and Harold K. Jakobson, Engaging Countries. Strengthening Compliance 
with International Environmental Accords. 
29Steven Bernstein, The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2001). 
30 Magdalena, Bexell, Exploring Responsibility. Public and Private in Humans Rights Protection, 
Doctoral thesis (Lund: Lund University, Department of Political Science, 2005) and Jennifer 
Clapp, “ Global Environmental Governance for Corporate Social Responsibility”, Global 
Environmental Politics 5, no. 3 (2005): 23-34. 
 11
strategic agenda and an unofficial tactical maneuvering.31 The official rationale was that 
the multistakeholder partnerships were suitable due to the strong implementation focus of 
the summit. The Johannesburg summit was a review of the implementation of the 
sustainable development agenda since UNCED 1992. The UNEP Executive Director 
described the WSSD as a summit for “implementation, accountability and partnership”. 
Hence, the rationale of the partnerships was to translate multilateral commitments on 
sustainable development into concrete action. The overarching idea was that the 
“implementation gap” in sustainable development could be reduced by “results-based” 
and “outcome-oriented” partnerships. In the pre-summit guidelines from the WSSD 
Bureau partnerships were to “reinforce the implementation of the outcomes of the 
intergovernmental negotiations of the WSSD and to help the further implementation of 
Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals”.32 However, partnerships should 
complement globally agreed Type I agreements and not substitute for governmental 
action. Moreover, partnerships should be participatory, they should entail new initiatives 
with added value, have clear objectives and contain specific targets and deadlines. The 
backdrop of the Johannesburg partnerships was the growing recognition of the limits of 
traditional state-centric multilateralism in implementing Agenda 21. 
 
The more skeptical interpretation was that partnerships represented a rescue mission for 
the predicted failure of the Johannesburg summit.33 Many commentators on the outcome 
of the WSSD have reservations about the promise of Type II agreements to put the lofty 
and broad visions of Agenda 21 into practice.34 Partnerships were launched to energize 
the last months of preparations to save the Earth summit that had low priority in the post 
9/11 era as resources were devoted to combat global terrorism. However, the choice of 
partnerships to vitalize the Johannesburg summit in the late 2001 was not followed up by 
clear and substantive guidelines on the relationship between Type I negotiated 
agreements and Type II partnerships. The function, goals and monitoring mechanisms of 
partnerships were therefore vague, underspecified and uncertain. The partnership 
outcomes were launched to strengthen the implementation process, yet there was a 
growing disconnect between the WSSD negotiation process and the Type II partnership 
initiative. This generated confusion in both the WSSD summit and follow-ups after the 
conference. As will be argued in the following sections, this can be attributed to lack of 
leadership from the WSSD secretariat and the Commission on Sustainable Development. 
 
 
31 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of 
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”. 
32 Find reference 
33 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of 
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”. 
34 Tom Bigg, “The World Summit on Sustainable Development: Was it Worthwhile?” 
(International Institute for Environment and Development (2003) Paper available online at… 
and Marc Pallemarts “Is Multilateralism the Future? Sustainable Development or Globalisation as 
“A Comprehensive Vision of the Future of Humanity””, Environment, Development and 
Sustainability, 5 (2003):275-295. 
 
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There is a deep disagreement about the merits and dangers of WSSD partnerships. 
Proponents point to the potential benefits of partnerships that pool assets, expertise and 
creativity of the diverse sectors. Furthermore, multi-stakeholder partnership can connect 
local practices and global norms through their flexible and decentralized character. The 
business sectors and parts of the NGO community embraced the partnership idea, as did 
many industrialized countries subscribing to its liberal environmental tenets. However, 
skeptics continue to challenge the partnerships for paving the way to privatization of 
governance and the UN. While the NGO community was divided (some prominent 
NGOs are lead parties of partnerships), some of the fiercest critique comes from civil 
society. Partnerships in their perspective are viewed as corporate environmentalism. The 
partnerships represented an opportunity for transnational business to “greenwash”, i.e. to 
put a green profile on their activities without much of substance and real commitment for 
environmental improvements. Moreover, partnerships signify the abdication of 
governments’ responsibility to implement multilateral commitments on sustainable 
development. The “retreat of the state” was looming in the summit and follow-up and 
could lead to fragmentation creating a “[m]ultilateralism a la carte in a global ‘multi-
stakeholder bazaar’”.35 Developing countries were skeptical of partnerships, albeit some 
were beneficiaries (for example of those partnerships aimed at eradicating poverty, 
improving health and sanitation). Many developing countries feared that the partnerships 
would be an excuse for industrialized countries to scale down additional resources and 
international development assistance for financing sustainable development. Hence, the 
demand for “new and additional” resources surfaced in the contested debate about the 
merits and dangers of partnerships. 
 
The Johannesburg partnership can be seen as a subset of multi-stakeholder processes. 
Multi-stakeholder processes have been launched to operationalize the principles of 
inclusion and to increase legitimacy in terms of “broad ownership” of decisions in 
international collaborative problem solving.36 These are processes of interaction between 
state and non-state actors withdifferent purposes and functions, such as information 
sharing, dialogue, consensus building, joint problems-solving, decision-making, 
implementation and monitoring.37 The multi-stakeholder dialogues, which have been 
arranged by the UN Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) before, at and after 
the Johannesburg summit enabled interaction between the nine formal major groups38 and 
government delegates. Both dialogues and partnerships bring together civil society, 
 
35 Marc Pallemarts “Is Multilateralism the Future? Sustainable Development or Globalisation as 
‘A Comprehensive Vision of the Future of Humanity’”, p. 286. 
36 Ferenz, Michele, “Multistakeholder dialogues: Learning from the UNCSD Experience,” 
Background Paper No. 4 for the Third Preparatory Session, March 24-April l5, 2002 
(Commission on Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United 
Nations, 2002). 
37 Susskind, Lawrence E. et al., “Multistakeholder Dialogue at the Global Scale”, International 
Negotiation, 8 (2003): 235-66. 
38 The UN major groups are stakeholders identified in the Agenda 21: business, farmers, 
indigenous people, local government, non-governmental organizations, the science and 
technology community, trade unions, women and youth. The list of major groups and their 
networks can be found on then website http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/mgroups/mgroups.htm. 
 13
government and business. They have similarities in terms of their hybrid character that 
enables an interaction between government and private actors. Both represent “interactive 
governance” that build on multi-stakeholder collaboration through dialogue, consensus 
building and even joint problem solving. Moreover, partnerships and stakeholder 
dialogues are multi-stakeholder endeavors, but they have different purposes and degree of 
formality. CSD sponsored stakeholder dialogues on sustainable development themes 
primarily have the overarching function to inform intergovernmental decision-making 
while the purpose of the WSSD multi-stakeholder partnerships is to support the 
implementation of Agenda 21 and JPOI. In addition, stakeholder processes have a more 
formal structure as well as clear and open criteria for selecting and representing 
stakeholder interests. Partnerships, on the other hand, have a more spontaneous and 
decentralized character as they represent a “coalition of willing” stakeholders. 
 
Voice, Accountability and Transparency of the WSSD Partnerships 
Can the WSSD partnerships speed up the implementation of sustainable development as 
well as increase stakeholder participation and legitimacy? In other, words are the 
partnerships for sustainable development effective and are they accountable? Do they 
include a wide base of stakeholder interests corresponding to the nine formal UN major 
groups? These issues will be discussed in the sections below. 
 
Representation 
What is the level of representativeness in the partnership initiative? Which stakeholder 
groups are included or are leaders of partnerships? Recent critical assessments39 argue 
that resourceful and powerful actors dominate the WSSD partnerships. Few partnerships 
are multi-stakeholder endeavor in terms of involving disenfranchised groups. Only six 
percent of the partnerships (i.e. less than 20) include stakeholders from all major 
categories, developed and developing countries, intergovernmental organizations and the 
nine major groups.40 The broad picture is that the partnerships are North-driven, 
sponsored by primarily by international organizations and a handful industrialized 
countries. There is both a lack of grassroot and local participation from the South as well 
as private sector involvement. The private sector leads only two percent, and is involved 
 
39 This section is based on evaluations of partnerships Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, 
“Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”; 
Thomas N. Hale and Denise L. Mauzerall, “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Can the 
Johannesburg Partnerships Coordinate Action on Sustainable Development?”, Journal of 
Environment and Development, 13, no. 3 (2004) :220-239; Maria Ivanova, “Partnership, 
International Organizations, and Global Environmental Governance”; Thorsten Benner, Charlotte 
Streck and Jan Martin Witte, eds., Progress or Peril? Networks and Partnerships in Global 
Environmental Governance. The Post-Johannesburg Agenda and official United Nations reports 
and updates on the Johannesburg partnership initiative such as United Nations, Partnerships for 
Sustainable Development. Report of the Secretary General, E/CN.17/2004/16 (New York: 
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2004b) and United Nations, Partnerships for 
Sustainable Development – Update. Background Paper No. 1. DESA/DSD/2005/1. Commission 
on Sustainable Development, Thirteenth Session, 11-22 April 2005 (New York: Department of 
Economic and Social Affairs, 2005). 
40 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of 
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”, p. 23-24. 
 14
in only 20 percent of partnerships.41 It is noteworthy that the business sector is quite 
marginal in the partnership enterprise given the recurrent argument that partnerships pave 
the way for the privatization of environmental governance. The lead partners are 
primarily international organizations (26 percent), western-based international NGOs (35 
percent) and governments from OECD countries (33 percent). International organizations 
lead almost a third of the partnerships, which indicates that partnerships are an 
opportunity for multilateral institutions to reinvent their mission and reassert their 
programs. In partnerships lead by governments six states (Australia, France, Indonesia, 
US, Italy and Japan) are represented in 70 percent of the partnerships.42 Local actors, 
low-income countries, small NGOs and grassroots are less represented. For example, 
only six percent of the partnerships are lead by low and middle-income countries. 
 
This supports the argument that partnerships are “supply-driven” rather than “demand-
driven”, i.e. that the actors with the most advanced capacity are engaged rather than those 
with the largest functional needs.43 Partnerships mirror rather than transform existing 
relations of power between North and South, governmental and private authority and 
global professionals and local grassroots, which are not surprising given their voluntary 
and self-governing nature. Partnership networks represent “coalition of willing”: they 
can, but do not have to be collaborative endeavors between stakeholders from 
government, business and civil society. They have a more narrow group of stakeholder 
representation than formalized multi-stakeholder processes under the UN auspices as 
discussed earlier. 
 
Accountability and Transparency 
The WSSD partnerships have repeatedly been criticized for lack of accountability and 
transparency. Critics argue that the promising rhetoric of partnership is not matched with 
progress and results on the ground. In this perspective, partnership networks need to be 
accountable to the various stakeholders affected, for example NGOs, indigenous people, 
business, governments and multilateral financial institutions. The need for systematic 
monitoring progress of partnerships has been emphasized at the annual meetings of the 
Commission on Sustainable Development.44 As discussed in the previous sections, 
WSSD partnerships are amenable to horizontal accountability (market, reputational and 
peer accountability). This fits the flexible and decentralized features of partnerships 
 
41 Thomas N. Hale and Denise L. Mauzerall,“Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Can the 
Johannesburg Partnerships Coordinate Action on Sustainable Development?”, p. 230-231 
42 Ibid. p. 231 
43 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of 
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”. 
44United Nations, Commission on Sustainable Development. Report on the Eleventh Session (27 
January 2003 and 28 April -9 May 2003) E/CN.17/2003/6 (New York: Economic and Social 
Council, 2003); United Nations, Commission on Sustainable Development. Report on the 
Twelfth Session (9 May 2005 and 14-30 April 2005). E/CN.17/2004/21 (New York: Economic 
and Social Council, 2004a) and United Nations, Partnerships for Sustainable Development. 
Report of the Secretary General, E/CN.17/2004/16 (New York: Department of Economic and 
Social Affairs, 2004b). 
 15
rather than top-down forms of accountability (such as a centralized agency overseeing 
and sanctioning partnerships). 
 
The absence of any single principle in multi-sectoral networks raises the question: to 
whom should partnerships be accountable? One answer could be the multiple 
stakeholders which represent diverse constituencies. In order to match these many 
principals, have proposed a pluralistic system of accountability for partnerships.45 
Reputational accountability, i.e. naming and shaming can be effective since public 
credibility and images are critical for many actors in partnerships. Market or financial 
accountability can be important instrumentz for consumers and donors to reward and 
punish lead actors in the partnership. However, it is too early to judge if these 
accountability mechanisms have been put into practice in the WSSD partnership 
initiative. No instance of a partnership that has been removed from the registry for 
insufficient accountability to stakeholders is known to the author. Instead transparency-
based accountability mechanisms have been emphasized in the partnership initiative. 
Transparency and accountability are closely linked as accountability hinges on access to 
information on the performance and progress of partnerships. Three indicators can 
capture the transparency of the Johannesburg partnership initiative: a web site, a 
reporting system and a monitoring mechanism.46 Website for public information sharing, 
reporting system to share information about the progress of the partnership and a 
monitoring mechanism to define standards (indicators, measures) of goal attainment of 
partnerships are all key components of transparency. What is the transparency scorecard 
for the WSSD partnership networks? Analysis in spring 2003 indicates that less than a 
third of the partnerships has the threefold aspect of transparency, i.e. website, reporting 
and monitoring mechanism. Less than fifty percent of the partnerships have a mechanism 
for monitoring effectiveness and progress of partnerships.47 
 
The relatively weak transparency mechanism of partnerships stems from unclear 
guidelines and lack of mandatory reporting requirements of the Johannesburg 
partnerships. Pre-summit guidelines for the procedural basis of the partnerships were 
unspecified and vague. First in the follow up of the summit, at eleventh meeting of the 
Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD 11), reporting guidelines were 
established (for example biennial report and exchange of information to stakeholders). 
However, while reporting was encouraged it is still voluntary48. “Partnerships fairs” with 
showcases of Johannesburg partnerships have been a new practice at the annual CSD 
sessions as a way for information sharing. As of today a systematic mechanism for 
monitoring effectiveness of partnerships is lacking. Of the 311 registered partnerships, 
 
45 Jan Martin Witte, Charlotte Streck and Thorsten Benner, “The Road from Johannesburg: What 
Future for Partnerships in Global Environmental Governance?” in Thorsten Benner, Charlotte 
Streck and Jan Martin Witte, eds., Progress or Peril? Networks and Partnerships in Global 
Environmental Governance. The Post-Johannesburg Agenda, p. 75. 
46 Thomas N. Hale and Denise L. Mauzerall, “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Can the 
Johannesburg Partnerships Coordinate Action on Sustainable Development?”, p. 227. 
47 Ibid., p. 228. 
48 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of 
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”, p. 22. 
 16
only 59 (i.e. 20 percent) have submitted updates on progress49. These progress reports 
concern organizational activities, coordination activities and implementation activities. 
However, only one percent of the partnerships reported that they met their stated goal. 
 
To conclude, the partnerships reflect rather transform relations of power in global 
environmental governance. Partnerships represent “coalition of willing” partners rather 
than actors with the greatest need for resources and the lowest capacity building for 
sustainable development. While some partnerships have a true multi-stakeholder 
character with wide representation of governments and major stakeholder groups these 
are an exception rather than a rule. Most partnerships are lead by Northern governments, 
international organizations, and predominantly Washington-based NGOs. No systematic 
mechanism to track progress of implementation record of partnerships is yet in place. 
 
The Effectiveness of the WSSD Partnerships 
This section takes stock of the output legitimacy in terms of effectiveness of the WSSD 
partnerships. Do the Johannesburg partnerships deliver results-based environmental 
governance? Do they encourage problem-focused, result-oriented forms of environmental 
policy making? Do partnerships fulfill the obligations in multilateral agreements such as 
the JPOI and the Agenda 21? Do they close the “implementation gap” in sustainable 
development? In order to answer these questions about the effectiveness and 
implementation track of partnerships, clear goals for what to implement is required. The 
sustainable development agenda, however, is defined by diffuse goals, conflicting 
agendas and norms, competing ideologies and trade-offs. This is inevitable given the 
contested and politicized nature of the evasive concept of sustainable development. 
 
Hence, the “outcome” effectiveness and problem-solving capacity of WSSD partnerships 
is difficult to evaluate. Moreover, a review of effectiveness is too early: the existing 311 
partnerships became operational first after the summit and in average have a time span of 
more than four years.50 Consequently, institutional rather than environmental 
effectiveness will be considered in this section. Two preconditions for effectiveness will 
be highlighted: 1) the institutionalization of partnerships, i.e. their linkage to goals and 
targets in multilateral agreements, such as the JPOI; 2) additionality, i.e. to what the 
degree partnerships generate of new multi-sectoral funding for sustainable development 
activities. 
 
Linkage between Partnerships and Multilateral Agreements 
The purpose of the WSSD partnerships was to reinforce the implementation of agreed 
targets, goals and commitments found in the JPOI and Agenda 21. The connection 
between partnerships and multilateral targets and goals is a precondition for assessing the 
effectiveness of partnerships. As discussed in previous sections, the problem to assess 
effectiveness stems from the unclear relationship between Type I agreements and Type II 
partnerships that emerged from the WSSD preparatory meetings. Furthermore, summit 
guidelines lacked clarity about the mandate of partnerships. Partnerships should link to 
Agenda 21, they should have “added value” and “relevance” for WSSD and they should 
 
49 United Nations, Commission on Sustainable Development.Report on the Twelfth Session. 
50 Ibid. 
 17
have “monitoring mechanisms” but these factors remained underspecified and diffuse.51 
As a result, the Johannesburg partnerships and the WSSD agreements evolved rather 
separate rather than being the integrated and mutually supported outcomes, which was 
intended from the beginning. 
 
When reviewing the profile of partnerships they clearly converge with themes in Agenda 
21. As illustrated in Figure 1 below, partnerships for sustainable development cover 
fields such as poverty eradication, biodiversity, gender equality, education, health and 
sustainable development etc. However, the Agenda 21 is a very broad action plan without 
concrete timetables and targets. The WSSD linked partnerships to Agenda 21 rather to 
the more concrete Millennium Development Goals. The vague Agenda 21 commitments 
make it difficult to subject partnerships to implementation review. The JPOI contains 
targets and timetables, but most of these were reiterated from the Millennium 
Development Goals (MDGs) agreed at the Millennium Summit in 2000. The lack of 
concrete and quantitative targets, timetables and goals was precisely the reason why the 
WSSD was subject to massive criticism and even ruled out as failure. Many of the 30 
targets in JPOI were repetition of existing goals in the Millennium declaration and other 
agreements.52 This included, for example, halving the proportion of those living in 
extreme poverty and people without safe drinking water by the year 2015. 
 
Apart from the weak institutionalization, another barrier for assessing effectiveness of the 
Type II partnerships is that the majority of partnerships fail to provide concrete (and 
quantifiable) environmental and developmental targets. Around half of the partnerships 
address substantial issues of environmental management (such as climate change, 
desertification, energy, forests, freshwater etc.) but the other half fall within “means of 
implementation”, i.e. capacity building, education and information for decision making. 
These partnerships concern procedural aspects such as information and knowledge 
sharing but provide no concrete environmental targets, which makes review of 
partnership performance difficult. 
 
New and Additional Funding 
Do the partnerships provide new and fresh funding for sustainable development 
activities? Mobilizing new resources is critical in the implementation of Agenda 21 and 
to meet objectives of poverty eradication, sanitation and health protection in the JPOI and 
in the Millennium Development Goals. After the Johannesburg summit the funding for 
partnerships was almost USD 250 millions. As of June 2004 the partnership funding had 
four-folded to USD 1.02 billion.53 However, close analysis suggests that funding of 
multi-sectoral partnerships are “repackaged” funds. Large intergovernmental programs 
have been redirected to, and reclassified as Type II partnerships. More than 80 percent of 
 
51 Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of 
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”, p. 22. 
52 Tom Bigg, “The World Summit on Sustainable Development: Was it Worthwhile?”. 
53 Thomas N. Hale and Denise L. Mauzerall, “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Can the 
Johannesburg Partnerships Coordinate Action on Sustainable Development?”, p. 235; United 
Nations, Partnerships for Sustainable Development. Report of the Secretary General, 
E/CN.17/2004/16. 
 18
the funding comes from multilateral institutions, mostly from current programs in the 
UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank. Consequently, funding from new sources is 
limited and a strikingly small portion (less than one percent) stems from the private 
sector. This indicates that the partnerships initiative have not yet paved the way for new 
and multi-sectoral funding for sustainable development initiatives. This transformation of 
existing intergovernmental initiatives on sustainable development to Type II partnerships 
suggests that international organizations are trying to reinvent their mission and reassert 
their agendas and ongoing intergovernmental programs. The business has remained 
cautious of the Johannesburg partnerships, partly because of the fear of over-regulation 
and the establishment of centralized administrative arrangements to regulate and monitor 
partnerships.54 A reflection of this was that the World Business for Sustainable 
Development announced 95 partnerships prior to the Johannesburg summit and in a 
separate registry. 
 
 
Figure 1: Primary themes of WSSD partnerships (Source: United Nations, Partnerships for 
Sustainable Development, accessed at website: 
http://webapps01.un.org/dsd/partnerships/public/statisticsResults.do, November 29, 2005) 
 
54 Thorsten Benner, Charlotte Streck and Jan Martin Witte, eds., Progress or Peril? Networks and 
Partnerships in Global Environmental Governance, p. 7. 
 19
 
To sum up, the Johannesburg partnerships largely escape implementation review, partly 
because they, at their inception, were decoupled from global agreements on environment 
and development, such as the JPOI and Millennium Development Goals. A better 
definition of the substantial objectives of partnerships is needed as well as clearer linkage 
to targets and norms set by the intergovernmental agenda.55 Less than half of the 
partnerships cover substantial goals of environmental protection or poverty alleviation 
while the rest focused on procedural questions such as “Means of Implementation”. This 
makes an implementation review even more difficult. 
 
Conclusion 
The final scorecard on the input and output legitimacy of the Johannesburg partnerships 
is that there is considerable room for improvement. The effectiveness and accountability 
of these networked forms of governance need to be enhanced. Recent evaluations of the 
partnerships suggest that they can gain from a clearer linkage to existing institutions and 
multilateral agreements, measurable targets and timetables, more effective leadership, 
improved accountability mechanisms, more systematic review, reporting and monitoring. 
However, the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater. Partnerships are 
innovative forms of governance that can pool together diverse expertise and resources 
from civil society, government and business sectors. With their decentralized, flexible 
and informal features, partnerships can potentially link local practice with global 
environmental and developmental norms across different sectors. In essence, partnerships 
can potentially operationalize lofty principles of sustainable development and match them 
with realities on the ground. Plural forms of accountability are needed to match the plural 
and amorphous features of global multi-sectoral partnerships. 
 
The recurrent argument that partnerships consolidate the privatization of global 
governance can be challenged in the light of the empirical evidence of the current profile 
of the partnerships for sustainable development. Clearly, international organizations use 
the “partnership wave” to re-invent their mission. The private sector is still marginal in 
both leading and funding multi-sectoral partnerships. The business sector remains largely 
unconvinced and has instead pursued separate partnership networks outside the UN 
framework. Instead, multilateral organizations are the most common lead partners, 
together with a handful of governments in the industrialized world. This suggests that the 
WSSD partnership is an arena for reasserting governmental authority rather than re-
locating authority to private actors.56 
 
The Johannesburg partnership initiative is a reminder of that questions of voice, power 
and contestation are at the heart of global environmentalgovernance. The partnerships 
for sustainable development do not only reinforce and mirror dominant norms of liberal 
environmentalism and privilege powerful actors in global environmental governance, 
 
55Liliana B. Andonova and Marc A. Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of the 
Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”, p. 30. 
56 Benedicte Bull, Morten Bøås et al, “Private Sector Influence in the Multilateral System: A 
Changing Structure of World Governance?” Global Governance 10, no. 4 (2004): 481-298. 
 
 20
they to some extent reinforce governmental authority. The jury is still out on the question 
posed in beginning of the paper, namely if partnerships pave the way for relocation of 
authority from governmental authority to private (or hybrid) authority. Partnerships may 
also further strengthening multilateralism, where international organizations emerge as a 
forum for initiating, negotiating and brokering partnerships. Type II outcomes have been 
interpreted as the abdication of governments with regard to financing and implementing 
multilateral commitments to sustainable development. For example, US resisted 
multilateral commitments at the Johannesburg summit but channeled its engagement to 
the partnership arena in terms of being one of the largest sponsors of the public-private 
partnerships. 
 
An argument in this paper is that transnational public-private networks and hierarchical 
institutions require different yardsticks for democratic accountability. The legitimacy of 
partnerships taps into debates about the legitimacy crisis and democratic deficit of 
international institutions and global governance, which have gained prominence in 
international relations. The scope for transnational democracy underpins these issues.57 
However, one of the models of democratic governance beyond the state - the 
cosmopolitan quest to transfer national democratic institutions and mechanisms to a 
world polity (with a global parliament, world federation etc.) - is utopian, unrealistic and 
further consolidates state-centric notions of democratic legitimacy. Stakeholding 
practices and group-based deliberation in networks are more compatible with deliberative 
accounts of transnational democracy. This starts from the premise that democracy is more 
about deliberation, reasoned argument and public reflection among affected stakeholders 
than voting and aggregation.58 Legitimacy in this context is generated through an open 
and public process of deliberation among a variety of societal actors; government 
delegates, business and NGOs. The key is to encourage vital transnational public spheres 
rather than large-scale institutional reform or a democratic constitution of the world 
order.59 Proponents of deliberative democracy argue that deliberation and reasoned 
argument can increase both input and output legitimacy of governance.60 This represents 
a pragmatic route to democratize the global order in which public-private partnership 
networks will remain an important governance structure. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
57Anthony McGrew, “From global governance to good governance: theories and 
prospects of democratizing the global polity” in Morten Ougaard, et al., eds., Towards a 
Global Polity (London and New York: Routledge 2002). 
58 James Meadowcroft, “Deliberative Democracy” in Robert F. Durant, et al., eds., Environmental 
Governance Reconsidered (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2004) and Smith, Graham, Deliberative 
Democracy and the Environment (London & New York: Rutledge, 2003). 
59 Patricia Nanz and Jens Steffek, “Global Governance, Participation and the Public Sphere”, 
Government and Opposition, 39, no. 2 (2004): 314-34. 
60 Thomas Risse, “Transnational Governance and Legitimacy”. 
 21